Musical expression and embodiment: Fear, threat, and danger in the music of The Lord of the Rings

The Arts: 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)Research in psychology and music cognition suggests several ways in which music might portray fear. First, I review the empirical literature on the acoustical features of fear-related sound, which is focused primarily on embodied expressions of fear. Next, I catalogue the ways in which these finding might predict the use of specific musical techniques. I analyze music from scenes from the film The Fellowship of the Ring that involve the Black Riders, which act as symbols of fear, and find that in writing the music for these scenes, composer Howard Shore did use the techniques as predicted by my interpretation of the empirical literature. I also compare the use of these techniques in scary v. non-scary scenes and find that they are used relatively often in scary scenes but rarely in non-scary scenes.No embarg

Variations in timbre qualia with register and dynamics in the oboe and French horn

Many musical instruments produce a myriad of sound colors resulting from diverse playing techniques, both traditional and extended. Such techniques include parameters that are often regularly manipulated in music, such as pitch, intensity (dynamics), articulation style, and duration. Despite the likely contribution of such timbral variations to musical experience, within-instrument timbral flexibility and its semantic consequences have not been addressed empirically. Participants rated sounds produced by the oboe and the French horn on 12 combinations of register and dynamics using the 20-dimensional timbre qualia model from Reymore and Huron (2020). Data are modeled with Exploratory Factor Analysis, partial proportional odds regressions, and random forest classifiers. Although trends between ratings and register/dynamics emerged, the results illustrate the complexity of within-instrument timbral variability. Some trends were approximately linear, others demonstrated non-linear patterns, and some timbre qualia dimensions displayed interactions between register and dynamics. While certain trends were shared between the oboe and French horn, such as an increase in sparkling/brilliant ratings with register, others seem to be unique to each instrument, such as the relationship of ratings of woody to register for the oboe or of ratings of muted/veiled to dynamics for the horn. Results demonstrate that within-instrument timbral variability based on dynamic and register is apparent to listeners and that semantic interactions among parameters can be present. The methodology established in this paper can be extended to address within-instrument timbral flexibility with respect to articulation, duration, and other sources of variation for any instrument or group of instruments

Variations in timbre qualia with register and dynamics in the oboe and French horn

Many musical instruments produce a myriad of sound colors resulting from diverse playing techniques, both traditional and extended. Such techniques include parameters that are often regularly manipulated in music, such as pitch, intensity (dynamics), articulation style, and duration. Despite the likely contribution of such timbral variations to musical experience, within-instrument timbral flexibility and its semantic consequences have not been addressed empirically. Participants rated sounds produced by the oboe and the French horn on 12 combinations of register and dynamics using the 20-dimensional timbre qualia model from Reymore and Huron (2020). Data are modeled with Exploratory Factor Analysis, partial proportional odds regressions, and random forest classifiers. Although trends between ratings and register/dynamics emerged, the results illustrate the complexity of within-instrument timbral variability. Some trends were approximately linear, others demonstrated non-linear patterns, and some timbre qualia dimensions displayed interactions between register and dynamics. While certain trends were shared between the oboe and French horn, such as an increase in sparkling/brilliant ratings with register, others seem to be unique to each instrument, such as the relationship of ratings of woody to register for the oboe or of ratings of muted/veiled to dynamics for the horn. Results demonstrate that within-instrument timbral variability based on dynamic and register is apparent to listeners and that semantic interactions among parameters can be present. The methodology established in this paper can be extended to address within-instrument timbral flexibility with respect to articulation, duration, and other sources of variation for any instrument or group of instruments

Introduction to Future Directions of Music Cognition proceedings

The Future Directions of Music Cognition conference developed parallel to many of the societal changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The result was an innovative approach to online, remote conferencing. This proceedings journal reflects the research presented at the conference and speaker series, but the virtual nature of the conference also provides opportunities for this journal to be multimedia in new and exciting ways. Most of the articles in this journal are accompanied by an online multimedia presence, with articles linked to videos of the authors presenting, slides, and access to original data and stimuli. This article reviews the story of how the conference and speaker series developed during the pandemic, some of the achievements of the conference, and how the journal is structured

Master's thesis recital (oboe)

textSonate / Paul Hindemith -- Fantasia in A minor / George Philipp Telemann -- Fantasia in A major / Telemann -- Aria con fantasia / Peter Dayton -- Fantasy Pieces / Carl Nielsen.MusicSupervisor not listed on recital program

Making the rainbow connection: Audio-visual crossmodal correspondences between colors and musical instrument timbres

The Arts: 1st Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)A three-year embargo was granted for this item

Articulatory motor planning and timbral idiosyncrasies as underlying mechanisms of instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert musicians.

The study of musical expertise illustrates how intense training in a specialized domain may instigate development of implicit skills. While absolute pitch, or the ability to identify musical pitches without external reference, is rare even in professional musicians and is understood to have a genetic component, anecdotal evidence and pilot data suggest that some musicians without traditional absolute pitch are nonetheless better able to name notes played on their musical instrument of expertise than notes played on less familiar instruments. We have previously termed this particular gain in absolute pitch identification ability "instrument-specific absolute pitch" (ISAP) and have proposed that this skill is related to learned instrument type-specific timbral and intonational idiosyncrasies and articulatory motor planning activated by the timbre of the instrument. In this Registered Report Protocol, we describe two experiments designed to investigate ISAP in professional oboists. Experiment 1 tests for ISAP ability by comparing oboists' pitch identification accuracies for notes played on the oboe and on the piano. A subset of the participants from Experiment 1 who demonstrate this ability will be recruited for Experiment 2; the purpose of Experiment 2 is to test hypotheses concerning a mechanistic explanation for ISAP. The outcome of these experiments may provide support for the theory that some individuals have ISAP and that the underlying mechanisms of this ability may rely on the perception of subtle timbral/intonational idiosyncrasies and on articulatory motor planning developed through intensive long-term training. In general, this work will contribute to the understanding of specialized expertise, specifically of implicit abilities and biases that are not addressed directly in training, but that may yet develop through practice of a related skill set

Timbral cues underlie instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert oboists

This OSF project contains stimuli, data, and analysis scripts for the Registered Reports Research Article "Timbral cues underlie instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert oboists.